Best Practices for creating Custom Campaigns

1. Tag only what you need.

If your Google Analytics account is linked to an active Google AdWords account and you have auto-tagging enabled, you don't need to tag your destination URLs in AdWords. Google Analytics automatically tracks all of your AdWords campaigns. However, if you run paid search campaigns on search engines other than Google, you'll need to tag the destination URLs for those ads.

Referral sites are automatically detected and displayed in your reports. However, if you want to associate a campaign name or ad type (such as "banner_ad") with referral traffic, you should tag links on referral sites.

There are certain links that you don't need to tag, and many times are not able to tag. You should not attempt to tag organic (unpaid) keyword links from search engines. Search engine names are automatically detected and displayed in your reports. And again, you don't need to tag AdWords URLs as long as you are using auto-tagging.

2. Create your links with the URL builder.

Campaign links consist of a URL address followed by a question mark and your campaign variables. However, you don't need to worry about link syntax if you use the URL Builder to generate your URLs. You can then copy and paste the links in your ad. If you're wondering which fields to fill in, you're ready for step 3, below.

3. Use only the campaign variables you need.

The URL Builder has six fields, but you generally need to use only Campaign Source, Campaign Medium, and Campaign Name. Campaign Term allows you to specify the paid search keyword. You can use Campaign Content to indicate the specific ad, button, or link that was clicked. The table below shows how you might tag the two kinds of online campaigns: email campaigns, and paid keywords.

Email campaign

Paid search campaign

Campaign Source

newsletter1

yahoo

Campaign Medium

email

cpc

Campaign Term

the search term associated with this traffic

Campaign Content

call_to_action_2

Campaign Name

productxyz

productxyz

4. Don’t send personally identifiable information.

Note that the Google Analytics terms of service, which all Google Analytics customers must adhere to, prohibits sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Google Analytics, such as names, social security numbers, email addresses, or any similar data. Learn more about the Google Analytics privacy principles.